Finbarre Augustine Murphy

Finbarre Augustine (‘Barry’) Murphy was a consultant paediatrician in Halifax. Born in London, he was the son of William Murphy, a GP and his wife, Monica. Educated at Clongowes Wood College in Dublin, he studied medicine at University College, Cork and the South Infirmary. Qualifying in 1952, he did house jobs and then went to the USA as a rotating intern at St Mary’s Hospital in San Francisco from 1954 to 1955. From there he went to Kenya and worked as a medical officer in the Ortum Roman Catholic Mission Hospital in Kitale.

Returning to the UK in 1958, he went to Sheffield as paediatric house physician at the Children’s Hospital and then became a paediatric registrar at the Churchill Hospital, staying until 1962. He then joined the staff of Addenbrooke’s Hospital as a registrar for three years before being a consultant paediatrician at the Halifax General Hospital in 1966. When he died grateful patients posted tributes in his memory, including one woman who acknowledge that he had kept her alive 42 years earlier when she had been a suspected ‘miscarriage’ of less than three pounds.

Outside medicine he enjoyed studying history, art and gardening.

In 1972 he married Barbara Elizabeth who was a nurse. Barbara predeceased him and when he died he was survived by their sons, Stephen and Dominic.